Walking While “White” Versus “Muslim” After San Bernadino

In about an hour or so I’ll be rolling out of my apartment building. I’ll walk for 45 minutes until I reach my office on campus. It will be a lovely walk. Crisp, calm, beautiful. I’ll pass by strangers and give the casual smile and hello. Just another working white dude in Houston…

I find it a bit odd though… nobody will look at me strangely or with an eye of suspicion. Didn’t a White guy just kill a bunch of people in the Planned Parenthood attack? Why isn’t anyone associating me with him? That killer was White. I am White, but nobody out there thinks “he could do something like that too.” In fact, in my entire life, I’ve never been asked to condemn a crime committed by another White person or Christian person. This is because of White privilege in America. I’m always innocent until proven guilty. Others are guilty and can never be innocent.

Today, I have a feeling that some of my Muslim friends will be asked to condemn the events in San Bernadino. I can only imagine how uncomfortable it would be for someone to approach me and start asking me questions about how events in this world are related to my religious identity. I’d be uncomfortable, I’d be annoyed.

In my opinion, my Muslim friends shouldn’t have to apologize for anything. The actions of one person can never represent the views of an entire group of people, especially a population like Muslims which totals over 1 billion worldwide.

If anything, the people asking my Muslim friends to condemn San Bernadino are the ones who really need to apologize. Arrogance and ignorance are crimes against humanity.

“The actions of one person can never represent the views of an entire group of people”

Well let’s see, this entire group of people are not just random folks are they? They all believe that Mohammed provides an excellent example to follow, at least if they don’t they are denying the words of Allah. So one person, Mohammed, can be said to represent to some extent the views of that entire group of people. Since his example includes murderous and even genocidal violence towards non-Muslims his followers should not be surprised when people suspect them of harbouring similar views to those of their fellow believers who also commit murderous violence towards non-Muslims.

This does not mean that they should be required to apologise for their co-religionists’ excesses. That would be silly but it is quite reasonable to enquire whether they think Mohammed’s example (and teachings) in this regard have lapsed or not. We are often told that Mohammed’s violence was merely historically contextual but the problem is that his immediate successors did not see it that way, nor did the great mediaeval commentators nor the various schools of sharia.

Who exactly does see it that way? As far as I can tell it always appears to be the deceptive apologists of Islam using sleight of hand to lead the kuffar away from the awful reality. If you disagree I suggest you examine that old chestnut “He who kills a soul, it is as if he killed all humanity”. Look at the whole verse (5:32) and the following one to understand the real meaning of the two verses.

white priviledge = the privileged of being safe because your culture and society doesn’t produce terrorists that kill people on a regular basis based on ideologies
yeah, we should really apologize for that